Ask Leo! #745 – The Journey to My New Computer: Success and Failure

Well, my new computer is in use as my primary workhorse. I'm pleased and it's working well ... with one exception.

Why might email not arrive when someone sends it to you? Or worse, why might you not get the newsletter you just signed up for? There are reasons, and a few things you can do. (Spoiler: blame spammers.)

Thinking about defragging isn't as important as it once was, but it's still a thing. The question is, should it still be an external thing?

Finally, a special aside to everyone who pointed out the news story about most major password managers having vulnerabilities. It's a non-issue as far as I'm concerned, and I strongly suggestion you use, or continue to use, the password manager of your choice. (My choice remains LastPass.) As I ranted a little on Facebook (no account needed), for the vulnerabilities to matter at all, it requires you to allow malware on your machine - and not just any malware, but malware that specifically targets the vulnerability. Besides, once you allow malware on your machine all bets are off anyway. I remain firmly convinced that using a password manager is still significantly safer than any of the alternatives.

It's here, I backed up, and I updated, updated, and updated some more.

Now what?

Well, now it's time to put my new machine into service. Let's review some of the software I've installed and use every day, as well as what's been working well. There's also one thing that falls into the “not so well” category.

Email mailing lists and discussion groups are a staple of the internet. From technical issues to social clubs to formal publications distributed by email, the email mailing list is a critical component of how we conduct business, socialize, and interact online.

Unfortunately, it's also the backbone for spam, and therein lies the problem.

Should I defrag my external hard drive? I thought I should as it contains some important documents and my computer backups. As such, I tried to use Defraggler (Piriform Ltd”s program) for the purpose. The program has been running on my external hard drive (capacity 2T) for the past 10 hours and it has done only 10% of defrag. The analysis does say that there are 32 fragmented files and 92% fragmentation. Is there anything I am not doing right? How should I defrag this drive, if I should?

While there are alternatives, you're doing it right; Defraggler is a fine program to use.

The more important question is that, even with “92%” fragmentation, should you even be bothering?

Leo's Other Projects....

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